Meanwhile, Back at the House
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: The Benders missing scene: It's Sam's turn to come to the rescue.


_For Wolfpup_**  
**

**Meanwhile, Back at the House…**  
K Hanna Korossy

Once Sam cleared the barn and the house came into sight, he ran for it.

Dean had headed for it nearly an hour before to look for a key to the cages, and there hadn't been any sign of him since. Some yelling, what sounded like threatening the Benders if they hurt Sam, but after that, silence. At least there hadn't been screaming, for which Sam was profoundly grateful; Jenkins' dying shrieks still rang in his ears. His brother's would have driven him insane. But no Dean with a key and a cocky, relieved grin, either. Just one of the Bender boys coming out to kill Sam, and he hoped fervently that was simply the result of Dean mouthing off and making new friends.

He wasn't sure he could live with the alternative.

Sam slowed as he reached the house, not knowing how large the Bender clan was. They had two sons and the dad incapacitated in the barn—the deputy had also mentioned a little girl—but who knew how many kids they'd produced with in-bred glee? It took a lot to bring Dean down.

Up on the porch, Sam crept even more slowly, testing boards before he put his weight on them. It was all solid, though, the door well-oiled, as if the Benders were good at everything except the small things like sanity and consciences. Sam slipped inside the screen door and into the house, keeping the wall comfortingly at his back.

"…realize this isn't normal, right, hunting people? How would you feel if someone were hunting you or one of your freaky brothers?"

Dean's voice. Sam breathed out low and long. Thank God. There was a tightness in his tone that meant stress and pain, but he was alive and sarcastic, and those were two very good signs. It also meant Dean wasn't alone even though no one answered him. Sam moved silently further inside, balancing on the balls of his feet like a stalking cat. It was an apt image. The Benders had come after him and his family; now Sam was going after theirs.

He reached a corner that seemed to be a living room and the source of Dean's voice, and hunched down to peek around. People didn't often look for someone that far below eye level.

Dean sat in a chair at the end of the room, his arms pulled behind him, no doubt tied. His face was streaked with blood and drawn in pain and, to Sam's discerning eyes, fear. Presumably not because of his captor, because Sam blinked in surprise at the sight of her. The girl? That was it? Although the blade she was waving at Dean's eye looked lethal enough and he was in no position to defend himself, keeping the tension humming through Sam. He would never let Dean live it down, being threatened by a little girl, but right now all that interested Sam was his brother alive and whole. He moved forward, still in his silent crouch.

Dean saw him, and all the fear and hardness melted from his face into relief.

Sam couldn't help but smile at him as he had in the barn, softened by yet another display of how transparent his tough older brother could be. As if Dean's reaction to seeing him in the barn hadn't said it all, or his even finding Sam, or the single-minded determination with which the deputy said he'd searched. It wasn't himself Dean had been afraid for, and if Sam thought about his brother's side of it, with the gunshots from the barn and the ominous silence, it wasn't hard to figure out why.

Dean was too good to give him away, even though to Sam the difference in his face was night and day. His eyes slid away from Sam with barely a tic, back to the girl.

"Hey, didn't anyone ever tell you it's dangerous to play with knives?" His voice rose, and Sam used it for the cover it was meant for, crossing the room in low, slinking strides. Dean continued in almost the same voice of outrage he'd used the other night when Sam hadn't left him a clean towel. "Daddy said to watch me, not carve me up. It's not dinnertime yet."

The implications of that line stopped Sam dead for a second, a wave of dawning revulsion sweeping through him. Dinner? They _ate_ the people they captured? Those sausages they'd given Jenkins and tried to feed him… Sam felt a little green.

"You know, I've got a brother, too, out there—_Sam_—and he's not gonna just let himself be shot."

It was a verbal shake, and Sam snapped out of it. Right: sick later, Dean now. He avoided his brother's eyes, as he knew Dean would be avoiding looking at him, and concentrated on the girl instead. A few more steps crossed the last distance between them.

She must have sensed his presence, perhaps some of her brothers' hunting instincts having rubbed off on her, because Dean's face hadn't even flickered. But as Sam reached her, she whirled to face him, knife clasped in her hand like she knew how to use it.

But, well, she was a thirteen-year-old girl. Now that she was away from Dean, it took Sam about three seconds to disarm and grab her. From Dean's expression, even that was a second longer than it should have. Which, considering she'd been holding Dean at knifepoint moments before, didn't carry that much weight. Sam lifted her bodily even as she started kicking and screaming, and glanced around the room.

"Closet," Dean said tersely.

Sam nodded. "Anybody else in the house?"

"Other than Dad and the two chips off the sick old block? Not that I've seen."

He nodded again, hauled the girl over to the end of the room where there was a door. It was indeed a closet, with a foul stench inside, but Sam was beyond caring. He shoved the girl in, pulled the door shut, and locked it, jiggling the knob to make sure it would hold.

Then Sam back turned to Dean, long strides carrying him quickly back to his brother.

"Are you hurt?" Dean asked urgently, and Sam reflected for just a moment how often they had to ask each other that.

"No. You?" He crouched behind Dean's chair, examining the ropes briefly before stretching to reach the girl's dropped knife. He started to saw at the ropes, but his eyes were on his brother's profile, and the blood.

"I'll live. Where's Kathleen?"

"In the barn. The boys are locked in the cages and she's covering the father. One of the boys shot him by accident." The ropes were thick and didn't give easily.

Dean's mouth stretched into a grim smile. "Not bad, Sammy. Dad's training comes in handy sometimes, huh?"

"Right, for all the times we've been captured by cannibalistic backwoods clans." Sam shook his head. The rope finally started unraveling, and he couldn't help notice how stiffly Dean moved his swollen fingers in an effort to get loose, or the blood lining the rope's edge. His brother had fought hard to get free, and Sam could imagine too clearly why.

"Hey, you're the one who gets tired of the monsters." There was an edge in Dean's voice that had nothing to do with their conversation and everything to do with retreating adrenalin and dread.

Sam understood. He pulled the last of the rope free and helped ease Dean's arms to his side, then sidled around to in front of him to take a look at his head. "They may be people, but they're monsters, too." Dean didn't answer, grimacing as Sam brushed the cut on his head. He swatted Sam's hand away, but Sam only retreated as far as the blood he now noticed on Dean's jacket, as well as… "Dean?"

"Hot poker," Dean said, tone as shutoff as his expression. "Fun family." He was rubbing his hands and wrists, his arm on the burned side moving stiffly, but the message was clear: he didn't want to talk about it. Sam just fingered the blackened edges of the shirt gently, then looked up to meet Dean's eyes.

The pain, the grief, the fear mixed with relief, were all mirrored there. For someone who didn't like to share his feelings, Dean's eyes were eloquent. It was still too close a call for either of them to be pretending it hadn't fazed them, not that the posturing that was sure to come later would hide anything, either. Sam gave him a small smile.

Dean's hand dropped onto his head, catching on Sam's tousled hair for a moment as if he needed to make sure Sam was really there. Sam reached up and clasped his wrist, careful with the abraded skin. There were a lot of ways to talk, and while Dean avoided the most obvious, he was less stingy with others than he pretended to be.

A gunshot came from outside.

They both looked up, then back at each other. Dean's hand tightened briefly on Sam's scalp, then fell away, and he also let go. "You sure you're okay?" Dean asked gruffly.

Sam nodded. Ironic, him having been the one who'd needed saving and all. He'd have to make sure Dean was really okay, later, too, when there was time and opportunity for a little fussing.

Dean cuffed him lightly on the side of the head, then pushed himself to his feet. "Let's go."

And, side-by-side again, they went.

**The End**


End file.
